A bleak, moody dose of otherworldly weirdness from artist Yoshitaka Amano (_Final Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D_) and writer/director Mamoru Oshii (_Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell_). As this is primarily intended as an artistic (or poetic?) exercise, the story doesn’t make a lick of sense. Something about a young girl in a floating cathedral, crashing into the ocean and then exploring an abandoned gothic cityscape while caring for a head-sized egg. She meets a rugged male warrior, twice her size but with matching shock-white hair (95% of Amano’s character designs share this feature), and the two proceed to sleep, share Biblical allegories and gaze silently into the abyss. Elsewhere, a squad of ninja launch an all-out assault on a school of gigantic, fish-shaped shadows before disappearing into the night. No further explanation is necessary there, I guess.

Cryptic and weird, drab and sluggish, I found _Angel’s Egg_ dull and unrewarding. The expectation that someone, somewhere, will eventually do something of interest is swiftly beaten out of us, amidst the leads’ glacial migration from one sooty, towering temple to the next. By the time it all draws to a close, after a merciful 71 minutes, I felt little more than relief. There’s style on display here, oodles and oodles of style, but no spirit or structure.